


letters for a lost love

by iwritetrash



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: (that's about as good as it gets), Drummond still dies, Grief/Mourning, Hindsight is a bitch, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Letters, M/M, Scotland, alfred is doing his best, like a serious letter fixation, not even close to a fix-it fic, overuse of the word letter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 12:51:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13248612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwritetrash/pseuds/iwritetrash
Summary: when edward dies, alfred seeks comfort in the letters that were left behind





	letters for a lost love

**Author's Note:**

> okay so i full blame [this post](http://animateglee.tumblr.com/post/169120652651/im-sorry-for-being-that-dick-who-brings-this-up) for all of this, because it got me thinking about letters and i ended up writing far more than i intended and this fandom really doesn't need more sad but it's out there now...
> 
> also i wrote this to procrastinate writing the next part of _all that lives must die_ , bc writing ~2000 words from the pov of a character who's on screen for all of thirty seconds is _hard_...

Letters are peculiar things, really. While someone is alive, old letters rarely hold meaning; there are occasions where a certain letter might contain some great confession, or might prove to be food for thought, of course, and love letters are always worth saving, but they usually have little use once a response has been sent.

That is why Alfred does not think much of the letter he writes to Edward. Their correspondence thus far has been limited, usually only taking the form of short notes with an address and a time to arrange a meeting. They have exchanged some longer letters, but love letters are quite out of the question, much as Alfred longs to pour his heart out onto the page and have it delivered straight to Edward. Nosy messenger boys are an all-too-real threat for men like them, so, for the sake of their reputations, he must be brief.

It never, for even a second, crosses his mind that the letter he writes after their argument might be the last words he ever gives to Edward. Had he entertained that possibility, perhaps he would have phrased things differently. 

The letter is found in Edward’s right-hand pocket, spared, for the most part, from the blood which had poured from the wound. It’s a small miracle that the letter survived intact, so they say.

Eventually the letter is returned to Alfred, along with the few other letters he had written Edward over the course of their relationship, when his family finally take the time to sort through Edward’s belongings. They have no use for the letters, so they are gifted to him.

Alfred suspects it might be polite to return to them the letters which Edward had written to him, and yet he finds himself quite unable to part with them. It is foolish, he knows, to cling to letters which hold so little of the intimacy which had existed between them, for they hold no true incarnation of the Edward he knew and loved. The letters he has tucked away in a drawer hold remnants of a different man, a façade which he presented to everyone but Alfred. This imperfect replica can never hope to live up to the man he has lost, but Alfred thinks perhaps it is better to keep those small fragments he has than to have nothing at all.

So he keeps Edward’s letters, and writes an apology to his family stating that he discarded the letters Edward wrote to him, and so no longer has them in his possession.

Alfred cannot bring himself to even look at the letter he wrote to Edward on the day of his death. He has reread every word he penned to Edward on other occasions, and smiled at the intricacy of the hidden meanings behind his own words, a treasured memory of their early days, when they were not burdened with fiancées and expectations. That last letter, however, with specks of blood marking the paper, folded twice to fit in Edward’s pocket, sits untouched at the bottom of the drawer where he keeps the rest of Edward’s letters.

The letters which were written by Edward himself have been read so many times that Alfred could recite each of them from memory, could replicate the very penmanship, could recall every mark on every page. Even the letters themselves have been crumpled and smudged slightly by teardrops on the pages.

Edward had never been as subtle as Alfred, always the more impulsive of the two, and yet his letters were so impersonal, so carefully restrained. He shied away from hidden meanings and emotionality in his letters, instead settling for depersonalised and factual admissions. They were a far cry from the man Alfred fell in love with. Perhaps Edward knew his own flaws, and sought to compensate for his lack of subtlety by removing all opportunity for his words to be mistaken for another meaning.

It is some cruel joke played by the universe, Alfred thinks, to snatch from him the one person in the world he truly loved, and who truly loved him in return, and to leave behind nothing but letters to recreate a hollow shell of Edward Drummond. Alfred spends his nights wishing he had been less afraid, wishing he had written Edward love letters while he had the chance, and wishing he had received such letters in return. 

It is late one night, several months after Edward’s death, when his candle has long since burned down, as he stares at the ceiling, that he picks up a pen, and pours his soul out into a letter for his lost lover. He writes every word he longed to have said to Edward; he tells him how much he misses him, and how he longs for his return, as though Edward is only away for a little while; he creates a world in his head where he is penning a letter to Edward in a foreign land, patiently awaiting his return, and he writes the letter he ought to have written many years ago.

When he finishes, the letter spans over eight pages, front and back, and he muses at how on earth he will send it, before reality catches up with him again, and he remembers that Edward is no longer alive to receive it. Alfred scolds himself for forgetting, and sets the letter aside to write another.

In his second letter, he writes an apology, the apology he should have written to Edward after their fight, instead of the brief note he had sent, now stained with blood and hidden away. Perhaps if Alfred had said what he truly meant, Edward might have come to him right away, and he might not have been there when that shot was fired, and then he might be alive today. Married, most likely, but alive.

The clock on Alfred’s mantelpiece ticks into the small hours of the morning as he puts pen to paper, crumpling up page after page and discarding it as he searches for the right words to say. In the end, the letter he writes is perhaps the shortest he has ever written.

_Edward_ , it reads. 

_I’m sorry._

_I miss you._

_I love you._

_Yours,  
_ _Alfred_

Alfred knows he could never have sent a letter such as that via a messenger, and yet if he had perhaps his Edward might be by his side right now, and perhaps Alfred might be truly able to send him love letters which were eight pages long and claim they were business letters, or perhaps they might have run away together to somewhere where they would never have to part, and therefore never need to write letters to each other.

_Perhaps_.

Hindsight does not lessen the consequences, nor does it lessen the blow, and _hindsight_ does not bring Edward back.

For the first time since it was handed to him, Alfred picks up the last letter he wrote to Edward before he died. He forces himself to ignore the bloodstains, as he reads the words he wrote in a time which now feels like a million years ago. As he reads it, he remembers the words the Duchess of Buccleuch spoke when she handed him the letter announcing Edward’s death.

_Take a deep breath._ Alfred’s hands shake, tears threatening to spill over his cheeks as the letter takes him back to that fateful day.

_And another one._ Teardrops land on the page, and Alfred dabs frantically at them to stop them smudging the ink.

_Here, have some of this_. He gets a drink, pouring himself a reasonably large glass of whisky – Scotch, funnily enough, purchased during their time in the highlands – and drinking it down in one go. 

Her advice gets him to the end of the letter, which he refolds and places back in the drawer the moment he finishes. It seems so… inadequate, having read it back. It certainly does not do justice to the way he feels about Edward, not that any of his other letters do, and to have that letter as the last thing Edward ever heard from Alfred… it is impossible to bear.

Alfred burns the two letters he wrote that night, and collects the ash. He knows now what he must do.

He returns to Scotland with the Queen, and he walks through the forest where he and Edward searched, and stands by the lake where Edward first kissed him, and visits the room where he lay with Edward for the first time.

When he finds the cliff upon which he stood with Edward as they talked of Achilles and Patroclus, he takes the small vessel of ashes from his pocket, and scatters them into the breeze, so that they might be carried to somewhere people will never find them, as Edward had wished to be. Alfred likes to believe that this is where Edward’s soul now resides, here in the Scottish Highlands, and that, hopefully, by scattering the ashes of those two letters here, it might somehow take them to Edward.

It is a peculiar idea to entertain, and he wonders if perhaps he has gone a little mad to think such things, but he finally feels close to Edward again, closer than he ever had when he read those old letters. Here, in Scotland, was where Edward was truly free, and here is where Alfred is finally able to remember him as he truly was.

Here is where Alfred finally finds peace.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you liked this and that it didn't make you too sad...
> 
> let me know in the comments if you did like it!


End file.
